Posts Tagged ‘Sweden’

Swedish Islamists are taking out loans through text message services to join the battle in Syria. They use the borrowed funds to buy plane tickets, cars and, presumably, other equipment when they arrive. Sweden’s security agency says that a majority of fighters’ travels are debt-financed. Thus the lenders are violating the first rule of lending: character. What kind of screening are these small lenders performing on their borrowers? So much for knowing your customer.

SMS loans fund Syria terror trips from Sweden

Sweden’s Security Service (Säpo) has warned that growing numbers of muslims are funding trips to Syria with money secured via text message loans secured in Sweden.

Investigators working for the security service told Sveriges Radio that there had been a rise in people taking trips to the Middle East to fight alongside terror organisations such as Isis (also known as IS) over the last year, with growing numbers of visits funded by loans taken out in Sweden.

Martin Frimansson, an expert on terrorist funding at Säpo, explained that while some Swedes had borrowed money from banks or using Swedish credit cards, others had paid for their travel using SMS loans (money borrowed via text message from private companies) or made their way to Syria and Iraq using cars rented in Sweden.

According to Frimansson, a “clear majority” of trips were made possible due to loans, although he did not give any specific figures.

He suggested that some Swedes were also taking out loans in order to raise their status within Isis or other terror groups.

“It could be that if you have a car and money…you automatically become a team leader. If you have no money when you arrive, no car or anything – then maybe you’ll be the ambulance driver,” he said.

By law, credit companies and banks are required to adhere to a range of measures designed to prevent the financing of terror activities, but according to Säpo the trend for Swedes borrowing money for suspect trips to the Middle East suggests that much more needs to be done.

The security service is calling on lenders to file reports on people who are failing to repay their loans more quickly and to be stricter about who they lend money to in the first place.

“They are the first hurdle to stopping terrorist financing. It is a big responsibility,” said Frimansson.

In April, Säpo told The Local there was “very little” it could do to stop people travelling to Syria to join al-Qaeda inspired groups, as EU officials estimated up to 6,000 people from across Europe have now fought in the war-torn nation.

It confirmed that at least 150 Swedish residents were known to have been to Syria or Iraq to fight for Isis or other extremist groups, with intelligence suggesting that at least 35 had died in the process.

Nearly 60 million Swedish crowns flowed last year from Sweden’s taxpayers through the international charity Islamic Relief to programs in the Palestinian territories that blur the lines between social services and the financing Hamas operatives. From the opinion pages of Arutz Sheva:

Op-Ed: The Connection between Swedish Aid and Hamas Institutions

Sweden’s taxpayers are funding organizations that have names like Islamic Relief, but promote war and terror instead of welfare and peace.

Published: Wednesday, April 29, 2015 4:20 AM

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), which comes under the Swedish foreign ministry, has for several years cooperated with the organization Islamic Relief (IR). According to the SIDA documentation, SIDA renewed its agreement with IR last year giving the international organization more than 59 million SEK(6,8 million USD) for various aid projects.

However IR is not only an organization associated with aid. It is also associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and with funding terror organizations, and therefore terror-listed by the United Arab Emirates since last year. In 2006 the Israeli authorities were notified of IR’s terror connections, resulting in the arrest of IR’s project manager at that time. Iyaz Ali. Ali confessed that he was in contact with the Hamas and had transferred funds to organizations linked to Hamas.

Since June, 19, 2014 IR has been forbidden to work from within Israel, including Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”). Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said in a statement, that IR is a source of funds for Hamas and that Israel has no intention of allowing it to operate and assist terrorist activity against Israel. According to the Israeli Foreign ministry, IR’s activities in Judea and Samaria and Gaza were carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by Hamas operatives. The intensive activities of these associations have been designed to further Hamas’s ideology among the Palestinian Arab population, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs states.

After the Israeli ban, IR last year commissioned an “independent investigation” of its office departments and activities in the Palestinian “territories”. The investigation found no evidence of links to Hamas. However, the investigation took place long after the accusations against the organization were publicized and did not cover the entire international organization.

Criticism against the IR has also been made by the Gatestone Institute, a New York-based think tank, revealing that current Islamic Relief Worldwide board members have links to anti-Semitic and Islamist movements.

In the IR’s aid project Emergency Cash-for-Work, which was funded by SIDA between 2008-2014 with over 32 million SEK (3,69 USD), internships for unemployed academics were arranged in Gaza institutions and organizations. Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), founded by Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, is one of the institutions that has benefited from these unemployed academics. To date, the university is governed by Hamas members and activists.

At IUG, Hamas developed its Qassam rockets and the campus store sells assorted Hamas propaganda and DVD movies that pay tribute to terrorism. Additionally, televised anti-Semitic plays have taken place at the university. Sixteen of the teachers and lecturers at the university are elected Hamas politicians and many of the Hamas elite have either lectured or studied at IUG.

To top it off, the internationally notorious, anti-Semitic Islamic preacher Yusuf al Qaradawi, who advocates for terror attacks against Israeli civilians (including babies), has become IUG’s own Honorary Doctor.

In other words: Sweden has provided a labor force for a university that is a terrorist and anti-Semitic stronghold for Hamas, and has paid for it. Swedish tax money has paid the wages of academics in universities like IUG, is supposed to help hospitals and institutions in local municipalities. Instead of using that money for job creation and true peace efforts for the people in Gaza, Hamas has used it on weapons and terror tunnels…

And these are just among the handful that we know about. Not many details are available, but what sounds unusual about this case is that the suspects appear to have somehow used businesses to channel funds to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (rather than using more conventional terrorist methods of hawala, wire transfers, cash smuggling, or charities).

Swedish police detained four people Tuesday on suspicion of having used six companies to help fund the Islamic State group, the Dagens Nyheter daily reported.

Police said a “large raid” took place in Stockholm as part of a probe into money laundering and undeclared work but declined to comment further.

Sources close to the investigation told Dagens Nyheter the suspects had ties to Syria and IS.

The paper said Tuesday’s arrests targeted three men and a woman aged between 31 and 50.

Swedish government agencies estimate that up to 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.19 million, 1.05 million euros) are sent to violent extremist groups every year…

AFP goes on to mention that over a hundred “Swedes” have joined terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria since 2012. These are, more precisely, mostly Muslim immigrants, refugees, and their young adult sons who have become residents of Sweden.

Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates, the second Middle Eastern country to do so within the past five months. In June, IRW was declared illegal by Israel for being a financial conduit to Hamas, and it was banned from operating in Israel and the West Bank.

The Birmingham, England-based IRW is the largest international Islamic charity in the world with a £155 million (240 million USD) budget in 2013. IRW has over 280 employees and is active in more than 30 countries. IRW maintains over a dozen affiliates throughout the world, each with multi-million dollar operating budgets of their own including Islamic Relief USA, which is the largest Islamic charity in America.

IRW accepted a $50,000 check from Osama Bin Laden in 1999, had a Gaza program coordinator who aided Hamas from 2005-06, received over £60K from an Al Qaeda front group from 2003-08, has leaders who are closely aligned with the global Muslim Brotherhood, and had programs staffed by Hamas personnel in the Palestinian territories as recently as this year. Supporters of IRW have noted that the UK’s charitable regulator has not confirmed the evidence against IRW; however, a 2013 audit found that the Charity Commission is understaffed, too passive in its investigations, and is generally unfit for its regulatory duties.

UAE calls 15 Muslim groups in the West “terrorists”

In addition to the IRW designation, the UAE named 15 other Islamic charities and advocacy groups in the U.S. and Europe as terrorist entities:

Cordoba Foundation in Britain (once described by David Cameron as a Muslim Brotherhood front group)

Council on American-Islamic Relations (the self-described civil rights group which was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas-financing trial)

Muslim American Society (which was created by the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood)

Union of Islamic Organizations of France (a French Muslim group tied to the Muslim Brotherhood that profits from halal certification)

Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (an alliance financed by Gulf sources with ties to Hamas)

Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland (the “main representative” of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany)

Associazione Musulmani Italiani (Italian Muslim Association)

League of Muslims in Belgium (La Ligue des Musulmans de Belgique)

Muslim Association of Sweden (Sveriges muslimska förbund)

Islamic Society in Denmark (Islamsk Trossamfund)

Islamic Council Norway (Islamsk Rad Norge)

Finnish Islamic Association (Suomen Islam-seurakunta)

CANVAS in Belgrade, Serbia

The UAE designated over 80 groups overall, most of which are located in the Middle East. The practical effect of the designations are limited, designed for “transparency” and to “raise awareness.” In other words, the designations include not asset freezes, travel bans, or prohibitions on transacting business with the designated groups.

This is a follow up to earlierMoney Jihad coverage of the organ trade that enriches Bedouins and Hamas. If anything, the ransom demands appear to be increasing as captives’ relatives in Europe pay off the abductors.

Sweden is specifically named as one of the countries where ransom demands to relatives have been successful. Perhaps Swedish authorities should look apply more scrutiny to financial transfers made to that region of the world, to ensure that migrants in their own country aren’t inflating ransom demands and keeping the illicit organ market in business.

Arab gangs are threatening to kill and sell the organs of African migrants if relatives refuse to pay ransoms in time.

European crime agency Europol has said the migrants are being kidnapped by criminals who then demand family and friends living in Europe pay thousands of euros for their release.

The agency has warned EU law enforcement authorities about the kidnapping of ‘irregular migrants’ and the subsequent extortion of their relatives or friends who are residing in Europe.

Ransoms extorted have ranged from €4,400 to €25,700 and have involved multiple negotiation steps where the amount demanded by kidnappers has increased incrementally.

Payments were made to multiple cash handlers used by organised criminal groups in locations inside and outside of Europe.

The agency said individuals orginally from Eritrea in the Horn of Africa, but who now live in Sweden, and at least two other European countries have been subject to extortion as relatives are held hostage and tortured in the Sinai Peninsula, in Eygpt.

The extortion operations were run by organised criminals of Bedouin origin, who exploit irregular migrants who had been kidnapped in Eritrea and Sudan.

In some cases, hostages have been provided with phones to call European contacts and request cash for their release.

In one instance, a victim’s friend living in Sweden was contacted by two Swedish-speaking suspects on local mobile phone numbers demanding €24,000 for a victim being held in the Sinai.

Threatening that non-compliance would result in the victim’s death and sale of their organs, the suspects attempted to arrange face-to-face meetings in Sweden for the handover of ransom payments…

Mona Thwany received a wire for £1,000 shortly after her husband self-detonated in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2010. The money was compensation for his botched martyrdom operation from her husband’s co-conspirator, Nasserdine Menni. Menni himself transferred nearly £6,000 to the suicide bomber before the attack, and was convicted in 2012.

Thawny claims she knew nothing of her husband’s activities, and that Menni gave her money because that was “a cultural thing.”

Now Menni is appealing his sentence, and his lawyers are pointing a finger back toward Thawny. Indeed, prosecutors should indict her as well. The evidence they found on her computer may be inconclusive (shades of Katherine Tsarnaev?), but Thawny’s smashing of four telephones with a hammer doesn’t sound like the behavior of a person cooperating with law enforcement.

The jailed financier of Swedish-Iraqi suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab appeared in Edinburgh High Court on Thursday to appeal his seven-year sentence. His legal team appeared intent on highlighting the widow’s role in the attack…

…[An] audio message left behind by her husband was made with software downloaded to her computer, the defence attorney noted. The message was emailed to the Swedish intelligence service Säpo alongside the national news agency TT.

“She also destroyed three or four telephones with a hammer so their contents couldn’t be reconstructed,” Taylor underlined.

“The bomb in Stockholm was the work of an amateur… which makes it even more significant that the ‘recipe’ for exactly the kind of bomb used in Stockholm, available in a magazine, was found on the widow’s computer,” he said.

Wiring from Christmas lighting found in the widow’s home was used to make the bomb, the lawyer further noted. The widow was taciturn and failed to answer many questions posed to her during the first trial in Glasgow…

Imam Haytham Rahmeh, a native of Homs, Syria, residing in Sweden, is trafficking weapons from Libya for end use in Syria, according to Sveriges Radio and a researcher at Cambridge University. Imam Rahmeh and has previously been described in a Carnegie Endowment article as an ex-Muslim Brotherhood member.

This activity is a probable violation of Swedish law, although it seems fairly similar to smuggling activities being carried out by Western governments and Gulf monarchies. Libya is often the point of origin of the weapons that are flooding Syria, and Turkey is often the point of entry for the for the smuggled arms. This story has the same fact pattern.

Swedish imam smuggles weapons to Syria: report

A Swedish imam has smuggled large quantities of weapons to rebels in Syria, a crime punishable by up to four years in prison.

Sources told Sveriges Radio (SR) that the Syrian-born man was one of the rebels’ key weapons suppliers and that he had been bringing arms into the civil war-torn country for the last 18 months.

SR named the suspected arms dealer as Haytham Rahmeh and claimed he purchased weapons primarily in Libya, but also made purchases in Bosnia & Herzegovina. The arms have then been transported through Turkey and into the hands of rebels in Syria.

Raphaël Lefèvre, a researcher at Cambridge University who has interviewed Rahmeh, told SR that Rahmed has made frequent appearances among the Syrian opposition and has been open about sending weapons to the rebels via an organization known as the Commission for Civilian Protection.

“It’s no secret that this group sends weapons to Syria,” Lefèvre told SR.

For several years, Rahmeh was an imam at the Stockholm mosque located near Medborgarplatsen in the city centre. He also served as the chair of a European organization for imams before shifting his focus toward assisting Syrian rebels.

Thomas Tjäder, a security expert at the Swedish Agency for Non-Proliferation and Export Controls (Inspektionen för strategiska produkter – ISP) explained that smuggling weapons into Syria was a breach of Swedish arms control laws punishable by up to four years in prison.

The law applies to all Swedish citizens and registered residents, regardless of whether the weapons pass through Sweden or not, Tjäder told SR. The EU export embargo to Syria entails policing at national level, he explained, meaning that it was Sweden’s job to probe potential breaches.

Nazir Hakim, head of the Commission for Civilian Protection, confirmed that Rahmeh has fundraised for the group and that some of the money collected went toward the purchase of weapons…

Rahmeh appears to be the latest in a series of imams (Muslim prayer leaders) who have used Western countries as a base to provide material support to militants, including Imam Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud (a San Diego imam who conspired with fellow Somali immigrants to fund al-Shabaab in East Africa), Hafiz Khan (a Florida imam who funded the Taliban), terrorist leader Anwar al-Awlaki, and Orlando imam Marcus Dwayne Robinson, a.k.a. Abu Taubah (who helped coordinate the movement of Al Qaeda fighters through Mauritania).